


True Love Leaves No Traces

by laireshi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Trailer, Bleeding Edge armour, Extremis, Guilt, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 12:32:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13590129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: Tony builds himself a new armour; one that maybe will protect his heart. Steve calls.“Tony,” Steve breathes down the line. “I—”Realisation hits. “This isn’t an emergency,” Tony says.“I’ve heard about your heart.”





	True Love Leaves No Traces

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for beta to [runningondreams](http://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams)!
> 
> Inspired by the latest Infinity War teaser. No spoilers aside from what was in the official trailers: I avoid any behind-the-scenes pictures or interviews myself. (Please don't spoil me in the comments!)
> 
> Also a fill for the "protection" square on my stony bingo card.
> 
> There's a Chinese translation by [fromgodwithlove](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fromgodwithlove/pseuds/fromgodwithlove) available in a few places: [1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13645296), [2](http://www.mtslash.net/thread-248740-1-1.html), [3](http://guzhiduili.lofter.com/post/1eeacfd1_123d729b), [4](http://hailstony.actbbs.com/thread-5786-1-1.html),

Life after Siberia is a selection of scenes. Tony hates it, hates that there’s a _life after Siberia_ in the first place, hates that something that had no right to break shattered into fragments so minuscule there’s no hope of placing them back together.

Some days, the feeling of _it can’t be real_ is so strong Tony’s sure his memory is playing tricks on him; it couldn’t have happened, it must’ve happened to someone else—but the pain is always real enough. Grounding, when Tony doesn’t want it to be.

Let’s take scene one: the shield. Tony takes it with him; he takes it because it’s pure vibranium and too dangerous to be left alone, he takes it because it’s a symbol that Steve doesn’t deserve anymore, he takes it because it’s Steve’s and it’s the last thing connecting Tony to him, now.

(He wishes he didn’t need that connection.)

Scene two is a reminder; a cruel one. The letter. The phone. Even the delivery was ill-timed, disturbing Rhodey’s rehabilitation—but the delivery guy made Rhodey laugh, so that was okay. 

_I’ll be there,_ Tony reads, and promptly puts it in the paper shredder. He’s tempted to take the phone apart and melt it, but he knows he won’t do it. It’s too important, in case something actually happens (and it will. Tony knows it will). It’s another link to Steve that Tony shouldn’t want, and craves so desperately.

Scene three is sudden. It’s the pain in his chest one morning, his left arm going numb, FRIDAY calling for help. Tony falls, but he’s not worried; everything smells like Steve, he must be safe. 

In the moments before he loses consciousness he realises he must’ve put on Steve’s pyjamas the last night, half-conscious after three days of non-stop work, and then the pain registers in full scale, and Tony’s hand goes to his heart but he can’t really move.

He knows intimately what a heart attack feels like. 

He wakes up in a hospital with Rhodey at his side, and doctors’ solemn faces above him.

 _Pacemaker_ , they say.

Tony’s got a better idea. It was stupid in the first place, getting rid of the arc reactor; of course his heart needs something to keep it going.

(He thought it’d be Steve, he thought—he doesn’t let himself think much anymore.)

“I had an arc reactor set in my chest once,” he croaks out. “Never stopped working on them. Put it in again.”

Everyone protests: his doctors, Rhodey, Pepper, Happy. Even Peter is there and looking worried. Tony never should’ve pulled him into this life.

“Do it,” he tells the doctors, and tells Rhodey where to find his spare reactors, and lets himself fall unconscious again.

Scene four and he’s standing in his lab, a new reactor in his chest and three spares set on the metal table in front of him. He takes a deep breath—or as deep as he can, considering; it’s still rather shallow—and takes Ste—the shield out. 

Another breath, and he raises the shield up and then smashes the first reactor to pieces with one hit.

And the second. 

And the third.

By the end of it, he’s breathing fast, too fast, and he’s shaking. The shield falls out of his hands and lands on the floor with a loud, metallic thud. 

He wants to lean on the table, but it breaks under him, damaged as it is by the shield. Tony falls to his knees, his broken arc reactors strewn around him. He touches the one in his chest to make sure it’s still working.

(It is, of course it is, and yet there’s no relief in the realisation.)

Scene five is alcohol in his mouth and a bottle in his hand; not the first, not the last. He looks at the burner phone and is torn between smashing it to pieces and making a call.

He doesn’t expect it to ring.

He looks at it for a long while, but even drunk as he is, the responsibility wins out.

“Rogers?” he says.

“Tony,” Steve breathes down the line. “I—”

Realisation hits; it feels like Steve punching him again.

“This isn’t an emergency,” Tony says.

“I’ve heard about your heart—” Steve says, and Tony hangs up.

He didn’t expect Steve to play dirty. He’s not sure why.

Scene six comes when Rhodey finds him drunk and yells at him, gesticulates at his own legs and says he’s still going to fight.

Tony, ashamed, doesn’t look him in the face, but he understands. He’s an engineer. It’s time he started fixing things.

(But he’s not a sorcerer; he can’t fix the unfixable.)

He builds better leg braces for Rhodey, he integrates them into the armour, fits the War Machine with more shielding, more defences, more pilot protection.

He looks at Iron Man, he looks at the node in his chest, and it’s like something’s right for the first time in eons.

“I am Iron Man,” he says to his empty workshop, and gets to work.

He’s got Maya’s research. He’s got his own half-abandoned ideas. He’s a genius.

But he starts with easy things.

Scene six ends with an armoured up Tony hitting a new reactor with the shield, over and over again, and the reactor never so much as scratching.

Scene seven is blurry. Tony spends a week rewriting Extremis to his needs, and then injects himself with the enhancile.

He remembers pain.

He wakes up and he can hear his computers.

He looks around and he can see through satellites. 

He thinks of his armour, and it flies to surround him in a split second.

Not fast enough.

 _I am Iron Man_ , he thinks, and he gets to work again.

Scene eight is another injection, one for which Tony had to cut off the part of his nervous system responsible for processing pain.

But when he wakes up, the armour surrounds him like a lover’s embrace, pouring from under his skin to protect him, smooth and flexible and _unbreakable_. 

He looks at his hand and closes and opens his fist, making the armour disappear and cover his fingers in turns. He smiles to himself, turns around, and fires at the glass wall behind him. 

His reflection shatters, but he stands strong.

(If only that were true.)

He goes for a flight, and that at least is unchanged: there’s sort of a wild joy in flying just in the armour, and it’s amplified now, when the armour _is_ a part of Tony in a completely new way. 

For a moment, soaring over the city, the world he’s trying to protect—he’s happy.

Scene nine is when he wakes from a nightmare—the worse one, the one where Steve dies, not the one in which he kills Tony—and discovers a problem with the perfect recall having Extremis offers him.

Tony’s awake, and yet he can’t stop seeing it. 

Steve, bleeding out, a repulsor wound on his chest. “ _You said you’d save me_.”

Steve, terribly pale, too weak to move, his eyes full of blame and betrayal.

Steve, looking at Tony, “ _You said you loved me and you abandoned me_.”

Over and over and over again.

“Tony?”

Tony thrashes in his bed.

“Tony?” Steve’s voice, but weirdly distorted.

But it helps Tony focus and snap out of the memory of the dream.

 _Extremis playing tricks_ , he tells himself. _Nothing else_.

“Tony, talk to me.”

Tony freezes. 

The voice—well, the voice in his head, but it’s not any less real for it. He must’ve connected with Steve’s phone on pure instinct. Extremis lets him do that. Extremis lets him do everything.

Tony should build in fail-safes against _himself_ , not just against talented hackers.

“Butt dial,” Tony offers after a moment. He doesn’t speak aloud. He doesn’t need to.

“I heard you—were you fighting someone, Tony, _talk to me_.”

Something in Tony goes hard at that. “Stop acting like you care, Rogers,” he says, voice ice cold. “You made your position extremely clear.”

“I do care—”

The call ends almost before Tony finishes his thought: _I don’t want to talk to him_.

(Deeper down; thankfully out of Extremis’ reach: _I want to keep hearing him_.)

Scene ten is the alien ships descending on Earth, and Tony putting his armour on and his feelings away as he calls Steve to ask for help.

“Tony,” Steve answers, already out of breath. “I need you. They’re—”

They’re _here_ , Tony knows, Tony’s been trying to warn them for years, and Steve fucking needs him _now_ , when New York is under attack again—

But so is the whole world, and they’re Avengers.

“I’ll be there,” Tony says.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a [ tumblr post here](https://laireshi.tumblr.com/post/170559043927/true-love-leaves-no-traces) :)


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